Californians head out of state to get vote out

1of 5Cassia van der Hoof Holstein (left) and her husband, Peter Albers, get daughter Viva May Albers ready before they pick up their son from school in San Francisco. The couple drove to Reno on Friday for a weekend of canvassing for Hillary Clinton.Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

2of 5Campaign souvenirs are offered at a Hillary Clinton rally in Reno in August. About 500 Bay Area residents per weekend have canvassed in Nevada in the past three months, organizers say.Photo: JOSH EDELSON, AFP/Getty Images

3of 5Cassia van der Hoof Holstein packs before heading out with her family to Reno to canvass for Hillary Clinton.Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

4of 5Peter Albers, gives daughter Viva May Albers a ride on his shoulders as he and Cassia van der Hoof Holstein pick up their son, Asher Albers, from school before heading to Reno to canvass for Hillary Clinton.Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

5of 5Peter Albers (left) and Cassia van der hoof Holstein of San Francisco pack the car before taking the family to Reno to canvass for Hillary Clinton.Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

With Hillary Clinton far ahead in the polls, the presidential campaign barely skimmed California. So thousands of Californians too jittery to hand-wring at home while the action was elsewhere have road-tripped to swing states like Nevada, Colorado and even as far away as Ohio and North Carolina to canvass door-to-door for their candidate.

For Democrats, their weeks of grassroots efforts may pay off for Clinton in Nevada, which pollsters recently recast as a state where Donald Trump has a slight edge. But according to the Nevada secretary of state, Democrats cast 72,000 more early votes than Republicans in voter-rich Clark County (home to Las Vegas) — or nearly 14 percent more than GOP voters. Republicans had hoped to keep the margin in the Democrat-heavy county to about half that to improve their shot at winning the key battleground state.

While making this sort of a difference in the presidential race is the primary goal for traveling Californians, many have experienced other benefits that have less to do with Tuesday’s result. Once outside California’s blue bubble, many had political interactions unlike the kind they might have experienced back home. In a small way, some hope their encounters with the rest of America will enable the nation to start healing the deep partisan wounds incurred during one of the most vicious presidential campaigns in history.

Knocking on a stranger’s door in Reno or Youngstown, Ohio, or Pueblo, Colo., opened the eyes of many Californians to struggles they didn’t know much about and to people they knew only by stereotype.

Attendees look through windows during a campaign event with Hillary Clinton at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno in August.

Photo: Patrick T. Fallon, Bloomberg

A few weeks ago, Jenny Berg was knocking on doors on behalf of Clinton’s campaign in Reno when a man answered the door. He was wearing camouflage pants with a knife hanging out of the pocket.

“My first instinct was, ‘I’m getting out of here,’” said Berg, who lives in Oakland. She was born and raised in San Francisco and said she never saw a Republican until she attended law school in Washington, D.C. “I thought right away that he was a Trump supporter.”

He wasn’t.

“And he was totally nice,” Berg said. She talked up Clinton’s attributes, and the man kindly responded that, as Berg recalled, “I think someone in the house will be voting for her.”

Last weekend, Berg was a poll monitor — an observer who takes note of any irregularities that could affect the vote total — in Sparks, Nev. While she was there, a voter came into the early voting site with a slate card listing the preferred candidates of the National Rifle Association.

Berg knows that happens all the time, but “seeing that made it more realistic to me,” Berg said. “I don’t know anyone who belongs to the NRA.”

For the past three months, about 500 Bay Area residents a weekend have been road-tripping to canvass in Nevada for Clinton, organizers say. Trump’s California campaign says it has been sending about 100 Californians each to Reno and Las Vegas every weekend. Many others travel on their own and connect with in-state organizers once they land.

These most devout supporters are doing the get-out-the-vote (commonly known as GOTV) grunt work that is the lifeblood of any campaign. A good GOTV operation can increase vote tallies by a percentage point or two, experts say. And while calling or texting swing state voters from phone banks close to home is helpful and necessary to remind voters to do their civic duty, experts say nothing beats face-to-face contact.

“Personal appeals that are unscripted — genuine conversations, any kind of authentic connection about the importance of voting — are key,” said Donald Green, a Columbia University professor, author of “Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout,” and one of the nation’s leading experts on grassroots organizing.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks during a campaign even at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno in August.

Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images

Trump’s campaign has dispatched its California volunteers to help with its simple plan in Nevada.

The Trump campaign calls its California ambassadors a “Strike Team.” Volunteer Patti Siegmann, who served 30 years in the Marines, as did her husband, Duane, said she was “very confident in our mission and our message,” when they knocked on doors in suburban Las Vegas recently. Like many volunteers, they relished the opportunity to do more than just fret about the election’s outcome in a state the candidates were ignoring.

“We were very upbeat. We met a lot of people who were upbeat,” Siegmann said. “It was very exciting for us. I wish we could go again.”

Still, she said her heart “was hurting” for the people she met who had had lost their jobs and “want to get their jobs back.”

“What I found out was that a lot of people are so disgusted with the way things are now. They want a complete movement. They want a complete change,” Siegmann said. “And they can’t trust the media to tell them the truth.”

Debra Walker, a San Francisco artist, has frequently had moving conversations during the several times she’s traveled to Nevada for Clinton. She has spoken to veterans who say they’ve given up any hope that anybody cared about them. She has met people who “don’t believe in the system anymore. It’s understandable when you hear their stories. They want a government that provides solutions instead of obstructionism.”

Last week, Kim Davis of Mendocino County traveled to Reno because she wanted to be in a battleground state. She has met Trump several times — including at the California Republican Party convention in Burlingame earlier this year.

“I shook his hand. I’m so impressed. He’s so genuine. He cares for America,” Davis said.

And she found that even the Clinton supporters she met were “very kind. Very open. One lady — her whole yard was filled with signs for Clinton. But she saw us and said, ‘Thanks for what you’re doing.’”

On Friday, Cassia van der Hoof Holstein and her husband packed up their two young children to drive to Reno for a weekend of work for Clinton. The San Francisco resident decided to go because “the fact that the other party has chosen a scary, dangerous demagogue (for its nominee) says a lot about what people are going through. A lot of people feel ignored, excluded, let down — failed in some fundamental way.”

After Berg returned home from a Nevada trip earlier this fall with her 16-year-old daughter, they watched the second presidential debate together. It resonated more deeply now that they had been out in the field, talking with voters — including some who didn’t agree with them. She said she starts to tear up when she thinks about all the nasty things Trump has said during the campaign. But now she feels that she did something to try to elect Clinton, whom she thinks so highly of.

“After being there, I felt like I was more a part of the campaign. I don’t know if I felt like I made that much of a difference before,” Berg said. “I wish I didn’t have to work or else I would have gone to another state.”

Joe Garofoli is the San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer, covering national and state politics. He has worked at The Chronicle since 2000 and in Bay Area journalism since 1992, when he left the Milwaukee Journal. He is the host of “It’s All Political,” The Chronicle’s political podcast. Catch it here: bit.ly/2LSAUjA

He has won numerous awards and covered everything from fashion to the Jeffrey Dahmer serial killings to two Olympic Games to his own vasectomy — which he discussed on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” after being told he couldn’t say the word “balls” on the air. He regularly appears on Bay Area radio and TV talking politics and is available to entertain at bar mitzvahs and First Communions. He is a graduate of Northwestern University and a proud native of Pittsburgh. Go Steelers!